author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

So I wasn't much looking forward to today's writing. It's mostly both characters being emo and angsty after parting ways. So, what the hell. I queued up the most emo and angsty song on Hunting High and Low, "The Sun Always Shines On TV" ("I fear the crazed and lonely looks the mirror's sending me these days"), I put it on infinite single-track replay, and I gave in to the mopey introspection. And I got a scene in which Lia is absolutely questioning her sanity, what with having all but convinced herself that Jet was a hallucination or a waking dream or something. Except she doesn't want to believe herself capable of hallucinating that convincingly. Except how else to explain the bit where Jet went from alive, to messily dead, to vanished? Lia has not been having a good five weeks.

("What with one thing and another, five weeks passed.")

I might never have gotten that far if it wasn't for some healthy competition at tonight's write-in. Have I mentioned, by the way, what madly enthusiastic Wrimos we have in Boulder? It's not that huge or far-flung of a region. Denver is bigger. Hell, there's only one region in the entire country of Brazil; it's called "Elsewhere :: Brazil". And yet, in our one-and-a-half-county region, we have write-ins to accommodate every schedule, every neighborhood in every suburb (practically), most of them initiated not by us Municipal Liaisons but by people who just liked the idea of, say, having a write-in at Flatirons Crossing, or who wanted to do Healing Tea Saturdays again. We have a scheduled write-in per day, average.

Today, we had two. One in Boulder, and one in Longmont. Since the two write-ins overlapped, we decided to engage in a bit of Word Warring. Word Wars are a bit like Word Sprints. You set a timer, and you try to get as many words written as you can in the allotted time. That's a sprint. Add competition, and it's a "war." From 7:10 to 7:30, the Boulder-at-Red-Rock-Coffeehouse crew vied with the Longmont-at-Ziggy's crew for the highest average of words per Wrimo.

But I'd been at Red Rock since 5:30--some had been there since 5:00--and I'd already hit 6667 total words, the normal Day 4 goal. Getting there took me through Jet's being emo and angsty over whether maybe she was a bit too attached to playing human and whether it was a problem that making out with her best bud back in her home world just didn't do it for her anymore what with there being no challenge or surprise to it. (Her home world is outside of space and time. "World" isn't the right word for it. Words aren't right for it. You see the problem I'm setting myself here.) And then maybe two paragraphs into Lia Five Weeks Later, and then I was done.

But it was only 6:15. I couldn't let the side down! I had to do more writing come Word War time!

Natalie Goldberg has an anecdote about a student who would write to the end of the ten minutes, to the end of the page, and then stop. This is in Writing Down The Bones, in the chapter called "Go Further." Goldberg writes, "Write to the eleventh minute if you need to. I know it can be frightening and a real loss of control, but I promise you, you can go through to the other side and actually come out singing."

It would have been no big deal if I hadn't. I had reached my goal for the day (get to 6667 words total). I could always right the rest of Lia Five Weeks Later tomorrow. But would I have written the same scene tomorrow as I wrote today? Would it have been the same Lia, the same family she can't cut herself free of, the same foggy mirror sending her frightening looks?

I don't know. This is some of what I got.

Abruptly Lia stood, shouldered her purse, and left the bus stop. Half a block along the way she heard what sounded suspiciously like a city bus's air brakes, but she didn't turn. It was a 10 minute walk back to her house, and the whole way she tried damn hard not to think of anything at all. The first flakes of a November flurry were beginning to fall by the time she got home; her dyed copper hair was salted with snow. She brushed it off as she let her front door slam closed behind her.

She collapsed in the armchair in front of a dead TV and sat there for five minutes or so, her mind as empty as she could make it. A sort of static buzz seemed to snap around her head like a fly. She didn't think about it at first. It stabilized, turning into a generic high-pitched ringing in her left ear, an almost electronic tone being played on a MIDI keyboard that didn't exist outside her own mind. Great, now my hallucinations are auditory. I'm one messed-up cookie. With that thought, she got up and marched herself over to the phone.

"Yeah. Sorry, Di--just can't seem to get out of bed this morning. I think I'm coming down with the latest 'flu that's going round the office. What, Jackie too? Send her my regards. Well, we'll see how it goes. I hope I can make it in tomorrrow--no, don't worry, I have no plans on being the next Typhoid Mary. Thanks, Di. 'Bye."

She hung up the handset, letting it clatter back into its old-fashioned wall-hanging base. The sound seemed to echo from the bedroom, as though something in there had fallen over at the precise moment she'd ended her call. Still hearing things, she supposed. But the ringing in her left ear was gone, that was something.

In the bathroom, she splashed water on her face and blinked, owl-like, at her reflection. Her narrow mouth, once so familiar and comfortable in the mirror, now seemed twisted, as though someone had snuck into her room while she slept to add weights to the ends of her lips. Just a milligram here, a flake of iron there, adding up over the weeks or years. She forced a smile, just to see what it looked like. It looked fake. She relaxed and watched her mouth sag into that warped scowl. Her lips were pale, with little pink in them. They were almost the same faint tan as her skin was at the end of the summer, visible at a distance only because her summer tan was lightening to her usual Celtic pastiness.

It sounds Welsh, said Jet.

Lia sputtered a cursed at the mirror, then began to shout. "Yes, dammit, I guess it does, I guess I can't cut myself off from my family even when I try to rename myself. Thank you oh so fucking much for pointing that out, imaginary person!"

What's that supposed to mean?

"Shut up. Shut up." Lia covered her ears and let her forehead fall against the mirror with a thunk whose echoes bounced around in her skull, less real than the voice of her memories. "It's been five weeks, what the hell are you doing in my head now? You never existed!" Her own voice seemed less real too.

Less real than the voice of a nonexistent woman repeating its query in her head. What's that supposed to mean?

"It means I'm done, I'm done being sick and scared and traumatized! You're just a figment of my--my trauma, OK? Go away. Please."

So, who's the fucking jerk now?

Lia squeezed her eyes shut as tight as they would go, then opened them, then turned on the water in the sink and the tub. Hot as it would go and with as much force as the building pump could muster up to her top floor apartment. She concentrated in the steam and the white noise on the face staring back out from the glass at her. Its expression scared her. The fog from the steaming water below covered it up, but she knew it was still there: a stranger wearing her face and twisting it into crazed permutations of depression, psychosis, loneliness.

I love write-ins. I love ten-minute word wars, and the occasional sounds of fellow writers snickering or groaning over what their characters just did, and the exhortations when one writer gets stuck to "have ninjas attack!" I love the industrious sound of several laptop keyboards clacking away. It keeps me focused on my own work, keeps me away from the temptation to just call it a day and go play something mindless.

But write-ins are not the most conducive setting for writing sex scenes. If I'm going to alternate between going red-faced with embarrassment and getting short of breath while trying to find non-ridiculous words for the pornographic pictures in my head, I'd really prefer the privacy of my own home. Also, the fear of someone reading over my shoulder gets intense.

Alas, I got to this scene while in the library with three other writers. So I turned up my headphones, turned down my laptop's monitor brightness, and took nice deep calm soothing breaths.

Then I came home and edited the sucker in private. Yes, I know, editing during NaNoWriMo is heresy. Heresy! But I'd already passed Day 3's target word count of 5001. Where's the harm, right?

"No," Jet whispered, "not enough time. They're right on top of us. No, Lia, stop." She pushed against Lia's shoulders and scooted back along the seat.

Lia cursed softly. She struggled upright. "All right, your loss. I guess I'd better make myself presentable."

Jet ran her hand idly along a bent and torn piece of the car's chassis that came to a wicked backwards-aiming point just above the dash. "You should go flag them down."

She was right, but Lia argued anyway. You can't just give in, not at the start of a relationship, or you'll be giving in the rest of your life. "Why me?"

"One, it's your car. Two, you're not covered in someone else's arterial blood." She indicated her rust-drenched clothes. "Also your shirt isn't ripped wide open."

"Fair enough." She got the passenger side door open--it took some pounding to make it budge--and slithered out over Jet's hips. Jet gave a sharp hiss as she passed, pulling Lia up short. "You OK?"

"Jerk. Shouldn't have let you start what you can't finish. I'm fine."

"OK, well--you wanna take care of business, better make it quick. I'll be right back with the cavalry." Lia walked around the car as Jet worked her way to a sitting position, using the twisted spike of metal for leverage. A miracle that didn't skewer one of us on impact, Lia thought. What Jet had done, did that count as a miracle? She couldn't help glancing back as she made her way toward the sound of sirens--she hoped Jet didn't end up cutting herself.

Later she wondered whether it was a premonition or just paranoia, whether the thought had prepped her to hallucinate or whether something even stranger was going on. In any case, leading the emergency responders back to the car, walking some ten feet ahead of them, she caught a glimpse that tore a scream out of her, the first since the crash. A brief descent in the terrain put the car temporarily skyward, and she could see clearly into the cabin where blood ran over the seats and pooled in the buckets. Jet's face stared without comprehension over the dash, wearing the ghost of a grin that seemed wholly detatched from the deep gash in her throat. Lia screamed again and ran toward the car.

The ground rose once more so that the car's crumpled top lay between her and any view of the interior. Lia collided recklessly with the driver side door, yanked it open. The paramedics, hearing her scream, picked up their pace behind her. She knelt beside the steering wheel, staring at nothing. No one was there. Not a drop of blood, not a shred of clothing. No one was there at all.

Maybe something will come to me in my sleep.

I spent a large part of Halloween weekend doing two things: making kimchi, and stressing about the NaNoWriMo Day 1 activities. Often simultaneously. It is trivial to stress while stirring a rice-flour porridge, running the blender, waiting for salted cabbage to wilt, or chopping up raw oysters. These activities don't occupy the brain. It doesn't take much effort to fill the brain with stress while doing them. Indeed, more effort is required to not stress.

But as it turns out, today rather rocked. So the stress was either A) unnecessary, or B) for a good cause.

I'm going to choose B) here. The stress was like, for instance, the stress over a possible Y2K disaster. In both cases, the stress wasn't just biting-the-nails insecurity; it was the emotional prompt for thoroughness of preparation. And preparedness averts unfortunateness. The result is everyone thinking you stressed for no good reason because obviously nothing went wrong, thus nothing could have gone wrong.

Well, that last bit is true about Y2K (which made a lot of programmers sad). Not so much true about my organizing NaNoWriMo kick-off activities. More "Wrimos" than I can easily count have thanked me for doing so; I do not feel unappreciated. In fact, I think they think I did more work than I actually did. As it turns out, a lot of the work involved asking people "Can we use your space?" and them saying, "Sure!" and me saying, "What, really? Really?" Then I packed a bag full of Stuff and showed up. The rest of the work was Boulder-area Wrimos being awesome.

So. Activity the first: We had an Inaugural Midnight Write-in in the lobby of the St. Julien Hotel. And the staff there were fantastic. Nobody cared whether anyone in our group was actually staying at the hotel; in fact, one couple had taken a room (ooh, luxury! *jealous*), but at no time did I feel compelled to point at them and say, "We're with them!" No. The bar manager and the night manager were both hugely solicitous, helpful beyond our wildest dreams, and exceedingly permissive considering that we taped up posters, took over half the lobby, moved furniture around, unplugged their lamps in order to plug in our extension cords, laptops, and my electric kettle. (In fact, the night manager seemed surprised that we would bother to reverse all the changes we perpetrated.) Aside from patronizing the bar a bit, we weren't paying the hotel any money for use of the space. And they didn't mind. They treated us like honored guests. They were amazing, y'all.

Wrimos began arriving as early as 10:30 PM. They ordered coffee, wine, and beer from the bar. They began moving furniture around, like I said, that we could all sit in rough circles around extension cords. Someone brought cake. Someone else brought cookies. I brought a bag of apples and a bucket of candy and some tea-and-coffee fixin's (the bar provided us coffee mugs galore). We ordered pizza from a nearby Papa John's (yet another thing I was amazed the hotel staff didn't mind us doing). Every once in a while someone would check the clock and announce how long we had until midnight.

Then, at midnight, we all started writing. Silence settled over what had been a merrily chatty party. Silence, that is, except for the clacking of keyboards.

I thought I did pretty damn well getting to 1674 by 12:45 AM. I still do think that's pretty damn good, but I am humbled at having been told that another Wrimo reached 5,000 by 2:00 AM.

Far as I can tell, everyone had fun. More than 20 people attended--that, on a Sunday night! And words got written. Thus: Success!

After the clean-up and the various carpools home, after John and I got home, after I sleepwalked my way through changing Null's diaper (I shall tell the story of How My Cat Got Into Diapers another time), I crashed and crashed hard. Aside from sleepwalking my way through feeding the cats at 10:00 AM, I pretty much slept until noon.

And at 7:00 PM we did it all over again, only with more partying and conversation and less actual writing, and the venue was Atlas Purveyors. And it was crowded--I mean, ker-OW!-ded. I lost count of the attendees attempting to find seats among the Monday night regulars (and there were a heck-a-lotta those as well). One couple did sort of give up and go home shortly after arriving, but most everyone else was able to endure the bustle and the lack of chairs long enough to enjoy meeting their fellow Wrimos and enjoying great conversation about how Day 1 had treated them so far, what word processors or novel-organizing software they preferred, and what genres they were writing in. Some of the non-involved Atlas customers got interested and started asking us about NaNoWriMo. We may have effected one or two conversions.

And now I am home. And I have edited a little of what I wrote this morning, in order to have a paragraph or two worth exhibiting on my NaNoWrimo profile. I hope to keep updating the excerpt on display under my Novel Info there on a daily basis. That's been a goal of mine in years previous, but I've never managed to do it.

So here's my Day 1 excerpt:

Lia's iPod had been repeating her Ramones playlist since pulling out of her mother's driveway four hours ago. At that time, she'd adjusted the car stereo's volume to a level known as I'm So Fucking Pissed I Could Scream (But If I Did I'd Never Stop Screaming, So I Won't). It was a very specific setting. You turned up the volume until the precise point at which the bass line started rattling the dashboard, then you turned the knob another 90 degrees. Some two hundred and fifty miles later, Lia was no longer So Fucking Pissed Etc., but she'd left the volume untouched because, hey, Ramones. And because it warded off the specter of falling asleep at the wheel, which was more likely than falling asleep in her childhood bed. The night was dying; the road was long. Thank God the road was long. Sometimes she suspected that only the distance between her family's home and her own was what kept her from killing herself.

Thing about nervousness in the face of a story critique is, I don't ever get over it. All I do is get used to suffering it. So last week I told myself, "So what, you're nervous? So what else is new? Send the thing." Then I found out that while the nervousness never gets better, it damn well can get worse. There's "I wrote a story and other people are reading it" nervous, and then there's "I wrote a story that's sort of transgressive and psychosexual and may reflect badly on the state of my sanity" nervous.

An additional large part of my nervousness came from not really knowing what I'd written. I spent two hours last Saturday doing a type-in revision of the story, after which I simply spell-checked it and sent it out. After which my only clear memories of the story were all the things that were potentially bad. Predictably, this was followed by a bout of "Oh my Gods what have I done?" panic.

According to my critique group, I wrote a damn fine story that steers just shy enough of purple prose ("it's more lavender, really") to have some stunningly poetic moments and breaks a lot of conventional rules and gets away with almost all of them.

OK then. *pauses to blush and grin uncontrollably*

The "almost" is where the difficulty of revising it will come from, because I think what I'm trying to do there is worthwhile but needs to be done in a gentler way. In any case, the negative parts of the peer review were all the right kinds of negatives. My story has grown-up problems. Now I gotta be a grown-up and fix them, the sooner to send the story out into the wide world.

Today, however, I am being a lump. I work 5 days a week, and I am deciding this week to trade my Thursday for my Sunday. I drove John to the airport today, after sharing breakfast and several bouldering problems with him. Though it's hard to find anything to complain about in a day that started with rock climbing and green chile, I am now unexpectedly tired. And being all alone on Sunday means a good block of time to write then. So tonight I'm doing nothing much productive.

I've been rereading old blog entries since last night. And laughing at them. I don't know if I'm just a vain nut or what, but damn I've written some funny things in these pages.

(I'm sort of snorting soft drinks through my nose over these two.)

And I'm contemplating the new crafting puzzle at Puzzle Pirates. Weaving. I'm still not entirely sure whether I like it. The physics of it are satisfying, but the animations are a little slow. In any case, I may be doing that for a while tonight. Also, my Sage Ocean pirate Nensieuisge ("Nancy Whiskey") bought an Emerald Class Sloop and really needs to take it a-pilly. So that's what I've got on for the night.

Then tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday, there will be work.

So. First, you gotta make stir fry. Stir fry requires sauce. Sauce requires soy, hoisin, mushroom sauces. Also hot sauce and a spoonful of dill relish (because it's easier than chopping chilis and acquiring sezchuan pickles). Also veggie broth. And you gotta totally overestimate how much veggie broth the stir fry sauce needs. Those dried mushrooms don't really soak up all that much juice, reconstitutin', after all. So you end up making a really soupy stir fry.

Oh well. You serve it with a slotted spoon and use some of the extra to moisten the rice. It's damn good. Mmm, mushroom stir fry with selection of Asian greens from Abbondanza's last veggie share.

Meanwhile, you have all this stir fry sauce left over and, incidentally, the leaves of all that young celery you chopped up. The celery was really more leaf than stem, to be honest. You hate wasting it. So. You toss those leaves and that sauce into your crock pot. You put an extra cup of water in. You crush up one of your home-grown tomatoes that's starting to reach the use-it-or-lose-it stage. You set the crock pot to "low" and you go to bed.

Good morning! Now. You've been defrosting that lovely 1/2-lb Celebration Roast since a couple days ago, because you wanted to roast it up with some vegetables. Now is the time. Pull out your pyrex casserole dish with the clear lid. Set the roast in the middle. Surround it with the results of chopping up one onion, two potatoes, and two big carrots.

Ladle over it a little of that broth that's been simmering all night. Did you strain out the solid bits first? I recommend this.

Put the covered casserole dish into the oven on 425 degrees F for half an hour. When the buzzer goes off, baste with more broth. Give it another half hour and another basting. Then give it another 10 minutes but this time uncovered.

During that last 10 minutes, make a roux of about a tablespoon each olive oil and whole wheat flour. It's not going to be a gumbo roux. It's just going to be a basic thickener. When the roux is well mixed and bubbling creamily, pour in the last of the broth. The roux will go all shreddy; don't worry. Stir it casually and let it simmer until the mixture gets homogenous again. This is your gravy. It will need salt.

Serve the field roast with veggies and cover all with gravy. Do not be afraid to invite your vegan friends to the table, or indeed to create this dish if you are yourself vegan, 'cause it is.

Eat leftovers cold for maximum delight.

Go forth and try this come thanksgiving.

(This post coming to you live from BeauJo's Pizza in south Boulder. We started tonight's write-in at the Baseline Brewing Market, but they unexpectedly closed early "for cleaning." So we hopped across the parking lot and had pizza and garlic-cheese bread and fountain drinks in mini mason jars. Today, Melissa finished up her first visit with the Ghost Prince, and I discovered that the first lesson she learns from him is, "You think you've got it bad? You think you're lonely? You, missy, are eight years old. Come back and whine when you've endured loneliness for ten centuries." Except the Prince was a lot nicer than that, breaking this to her.)

So Melissa did meet the Ghost Prince in today's writing. And the conversation was terribly stilted. And every line felt really, really unnatural and hard to eke out. And some days are just like that. I just keep telling myself, someday I'll know more about the story than I do now, and that will be a better day to think in terms of perfection. Today I know very little, and so I must content myself with exploration. Sometimes exploration is done by eking out stilted dialogue and out-of-character narration. Sometimes it's the only way to get from here to there.

My additional challenge this NaNoWriMo is to do one article a day for Demand Studios,, a work-for-hire content provider that publishes in respectable places (eHow, GardenGuides.com, etc.) and pays reliably on schedule. That's my endorsement. Go ahead and apply; I won't try to stop you. Some people who write for them make a full-time living wage from them, all working from home. Me, well, I've been patting myself on the back for four articles a week. I'm not satisfied with that, neither as an accomplishment nor as a paycheck. (Also, Demand Studios will soon be offering an optional health plan but only to writers who average 30 articles a month. I should like to qualify, if only to know I have that option.) So I'm trying to do one article a day in addition to 1667 words on the novel.

How've I been doing so far? Well, divide my current word count by 5 and then multiply by 30; I think you'll find the result to be slightly in excess of 50,000. However, I've only done two articles. Gotta be behind in something, I guess. But there's time yet to catch up. I've done two articles in a day before. I'm not worried. Tomorrow is a new day with lots of writing time scheduled in.

(Schedule, you say? Why yes! There's a calendar at the top of the Boulder Regional Forum home page. Go take a gander.)

That's enough for today. Food blogging tomorrow. Maybe. (But I still feel clever!)

Those with an eye on the calendar may have noticed that it's November. Yes, I'm doing NaNoWriMo again. Yes, I am a Municipal Liaison for Boulder again. You can buddy me at Nanowrimo.org via my handle "vortexae" if you like.

It's been going well. I've been sticking rather precisely to a schedule of 1667 words per day, which is just few enough to keep from getting overwhelmed by despair that my main character still hasn't met the ghost in the castle yet. Or that I don't really know much about my character once she's a teenager, a woman in her 20s, a woman in her 30s, etc. I just keep telling myself that exploring her childhood in detail will help me get to know the possibilities for her growing up. Meanwhile, I think I know why the ghost is in that castle. It's sort of half the traditional Beauty and the Beast set up, and half High Spirits only without the comedy.

My rough draft already has a beta reader volunteer--not that I usually like anyone to read my rough draft, but for this story there's precedent. I could have sworn I blogged this, but apparently I have not: Round about July 2005, I sat down with the creative writing prompt to take one of Tori Amos's more inscrutable songs and write a story that the lyrics could possibly, if you squint at them over your shoulder, be said to describe. I cued up "Toast" (audio link; lyrics here). After about an hour I had finished what I thought was the first scene of a short story. OK, a long scene, but rough drafts tend to be full of babble that'll get cut later, so, not worried. And I emailed it to John. And he called it "chapter 1" and asked "when can I read the rest?" And I said to the Muse, "You lied! You said this was a short story!" and She said, "No! Not lied, I was just, you know, mistaken..."

October this year had started and I still hadn't quite decided what plot I was going to try to stretch out over 50,000 words this year. John said, "When are you going to finish my ghost story?" I said, "You know what? I'll finish it in November." So I'm working on it.

(Also? It is not particularly subtle, naming the main character Melissa. Given that "Toast" is the last track off The Beekeeper. I C WUT U DID THERE.)

Today, I think, Melissa will finally meet the ghost. It will be midway through Chapter 2. Or it will be the cliffhanger of Chapter 2 and continue into Chapter 3, I'm not sure. I'll report on it later today, along with yesterday's pot roast. Because I feel very clever about yesterday's pot roast, that's why.

I was tired yesterday. I'd started the day early, and after getting back from the Boulder Municipal Airport, I was not, Enn Oh Tee Not intending to leave the house again. I was done. I'd had a lot of stress and dread leading up to that day (for all that flight instructors repeatedly assure me that a biannual flight review is nothing to stress over), and, having walked away from the appointment with a brand-new endorsement at the cost of a slightly bruised ego (stupid power-on stalls, stupid left-turning tendencies, stupid turn coordinator ball making me look stupid) I wasn't planning on doing anything resembling work for the rest of the day.

Writing dates? Not hardly. I had a date for a face-plant into my pillow, thanks.

I fired up Second Life over a late lunch, figuring I'd play some mindless clicky games at my favorite arcade/casino spots until I was ready to collapse. Which was when I got the Writers Guild group notice about the Milk Wood Writers' Meet.

"Hope you can join us for an hour (or so) of focused writing. Bring your WIPs or start a new one. Join us and create something!"

And I thought, oh, what the hell. I haven't done my Morning Pages today; I should at least do that. So I teleported to the attached location and pulled my notebook and pen out of my bag.

The Milk Wood is a lovely forest scene, as you might expect, with trickling streams and crashing surf and swaying tree branches and birds that sing and fly in and out of sight. The Market, or Gypsy Camp, is a forest clearing between a small bridge and a big furnished caravan wagon.

In this clearing are several picnic benches. On each picnic bench is a candle, a stack of books, an apple, and a typewriter. Each object is scripted. You can light the candle, view the writing goals attached to the apple, and I forget what with the books.

The typewriter animates your avatar, of course.

And the effect is oddly compelling. Watching my avatar banging away at the keyboard, listening to the tap-tappity-tap-kaching!-tappity-tap-tap noises coming out of the computer speakers, I'm all, "Well, I might as well be writing too, mightn't I?" And it's not just Kavella Maa's typing that I'm hearing; the typing of other attendees is clearly audible as a series of separate tappity-taps. The space I'm sharing with other writers-in-action may not be physical, but it's absolutely real. It consecrates the hour and charges it with energy for the task. The other writers may in fact be puttering around the kitchen or visiting the bathroom, but from where I'm sitting, they look hard at work, and it gives me that added push to get my own work done.

As with most things Second Life, this simulation isn't meant to replace doing such things in person. But when local friends aren't available, when I don't have the energy to head out to a nearby cafe, or when I'm just craving the company of this particular group, this is a strangely satisfying version of Going On A Writing Date.

It's 1pm SLT on Mondays and Fridays. They are thinking of adding Wednesdays as well. Don't forget to tip your host. And if you're in the Boulder NaNoWriMo group, you will be hearing more about this on the forums come October.

The aforementioned irrepressible Frank Wu took his Hugo for a walk today. He was one of the scheduled Stars for the final installation of Strolling With The Stars, and he arrived in the mist and rain with rocket ship in tow. And he says to fellow Strolling Star, Stephen Segal (Best Semiprozine, Weird Tales), "Why didn't you bring yours?"

We paused for the daily group photo, and Frank let everyone who wanted a closer look get a closer look. It's worth a closer look--it's an object of great beauty. The rocket ship is just taking off from an asteroid, and if you look close you can see the launch flames are in fact a collection of iridescent maple leaves. I got a very close look. I got to hold it. And what they say about this year's Hugo is true: It's frickin' heavy! It's a frickin' rock!

(Many thanks to Peter Flynn, who came all the way from Ireland, for taking pictures with his cell phone and emailing them to me. If you want to see more pictures, all the group shots will be posted sometime soon on the Anticipation '09 Facebook or LJ or somewhere. 'Twas Stu Segal who took them.)

Now, to sleep, to wake early tomorrow and toss my stuff into its respective containers and boogie down to the train station for a 9:30 AM departure. I missed the dead dog party tonight due to spending lots of lovely time with fellow Viable Paradise X alumni Barbara and Evelyn, but I will be attending the "carrying away the dead dog's corpse" party (as I continue to find it amusing to call it) in the cafe car on Amtrak's "Adirondack" on which several of us Making Light regulars will be riding together.

This will be a brief post* and not very polished as blog posts go. I'm tired and attempting to make an early night of it. I know, I know--an early night at WorldCon? That's unpossible! Yet I shall try.

Tonight's big event was the awarding of the Hugos, when the World Science Fiction Society presents big heavy rocket-shaped trophies to people what done good. This is my second time attending the Hugos, and once again they made me both giggly and teary-eyed. The reason for that is why I wanted to blog a bit before I slept.

Towards the beginning of the presentation, we get the IN MEMORIAM list. Names of those members of ours community who have died since the last WorldCon are projected on the big screens. Charles N. Brown, founder of Locus Magazine. Forrest J. Ackerman, "Mr. Science Fiction." And, heartbreakingly, the list went on for pages. After each name was a word or two describing what their role had been: author, editor, artist, etc.

The list was a very inclusive list. Walter Cronkite was mentioned, though he was not someone you'd have thought of as being part of SF/F fandom. His tag was "space exploration enthusiast." Michael Jackson, too: "genre music video." Fandom is ecumenical and all-embracing. Many of the people we count as our own might be surprised to find themselves in that number.

So that's the easy answer to why I get teary. But it goes deeper. See, a lot of the names, they got tagged with just one word: "Fan."

Science fiction and fantasy has its celebrities. Dang straight it does--ask Neil Gaiman, who appears increasingly chagrined as the years go by at his rock star status. (He observed at the "Finding Fandom" panel that his power to create a roomful of applause with a single word--"Sandman"--was a dangerous one that ought only to be used for good. He has been heard to observe that his simply walking into a con party halts all conversation.) And yet in fandom, "celebrity" doesn't imply the same sort of separation between the celeb and pleb as it does in other entertainment industries (my parenthetical comments last sentence notwithstanding). The line between fan and pro blurs to the point that someone might get nominated for "Best Fan Writer" the same year they're nominated for "Best Novel." The line blurs because every pro started out a fan, many fans aspire to be pros, and every pro remains a fan. Thanks to cons, acquaintanceships and friendships form across that blurry line and grow strong.

Tonight, John Scalzi won a Hugo for Best Related Book. Last year, I sat down with six or seven other fans at Scalzi's kaffeeklatsch and we all enjoyed a rambling conversation with him about anything and everything. Tonight, Ellen Datlow won a Hugo for Best Editor, Short Form. Friday morning she and I and several other early risers all chatted beside the fountain while waiting for the daily walk around town to get under way. Tonight, Elizabeth Bear won a Hugo for Best Novelette. This morning, I sat in a small conference room with a handful of WorldCon attendees to hear Bear read us some excerpts from her upcoming novel.

And all of us have been passing each other in the hallways, nodding to and smiling to and greeting each other right across that pro/fan boundary line that isn't much of a boundary at all. "Fan." It's a title we all share here. It doesn't get replaced by other titles--it just gets augmented. "Fan." It's title enough to get you missed sorely by the rest of the community when you're no longer with us here on Earth. The inclusiveness of that is truly touching. It reminds me that "home" isn't just a place; it's people too.

So that's the second reason the Hugos make me teary. The third, which is also the reason I get giggly--well, you watch. Watch what happens when someone gets the award and comes up to accept it. Watch Frank Wu (Best Fan Artist sorry, got that wrong before) galumphing up onto the stage, tripping over his own feet up the stairs, out of breath with hurry and utter surprise. Watch him playing with his Hugo, zooming the rocket ship around in the air and making whooshing noises. Watch him bounding back to his seat, still wielding his Hugo in toy rocket position, while the next category gets underway. And this isn't even his first Hugo, either! It's heartwarming and funny and makes you want to go over and give him a hug. Because you'd be galumphing and bounding and whooshing, too! And listen to the recipients who can barely utter their thanks over the sudden lump in their throats. Or the ones who get punchy and start interrupting their own acceptance speech trains of thought by looking down at the trophy they're holding--as though they can't believe they actually have one in their hot little hands--and blurt out, "Fuck this thing is heavy!"

The Hugos event is full of those little human moments--those moments when you realize, with the force of epiphany, "We're all humans together, and I love these humans, they're funny and wonderful and just like me, really." You want to just encircle the entire auditorium in your arms and not let go.

So I'm a little weepy right now and full of smiles. And very, very sleepy. And now that I have said what I wanted to say, hot damn! I get to go to sleep now! G'night!

* or not. Brief, that is.